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Published: December 1st 2006
Chewing up the miles, the way the bike never could!
Top right: proof that in a fight the fly will always come off worseNick:
Our last entry saw us clambering aboard a nice double-decker coach for a week of bikeless travel to the Southern corners of the country. We boarded and located our seats: "the best on the bus" as we were informed when buying the tickets. These were at the top in front with our backs to the stairs. During this journey we watched 3 films complete with English dialogue (spanish subtitles), stopped in various towns, travelled over 1500 km, cured and prepared the Maté cup I bought in Perito Moreno the day of our departure and experienced the time-travel chairs, as I describe them! I call them this as the Semi-cama seats (semi-bed) recline to offer the passenger a place to sleep, or in my case, travel back in time to the period of my life where I experienced the agony of a knackered lumbar region! Not very comfortable! Still I managed 2 hours sleep before we arrived in Rio Gallegos to catch another coach for El Calafate. This part of our trip was a balancing act as we gave up the bike and our own anonymity as westerners to then sit on a bus surrounded with dozens of other Europeans
Beautiful and ugly
Nodding oil pumps dot the wild patagonian step near Las Heras: a town of shacks for locals, luxury flats for oil workers, pump spares and a bus station. all "living the adventure" by doing the exact same thing as everyone else!
In essence, why not: that region of Argentina is very beautiful, but we could not help noticing, in one or two places that all the "shoestring" travellers, living out of their Quick-silver/North Face rucksacks were too bothered about whether they looked cool to actually have a laugh. Still, this mingling was necessary to allow us to see the Perito Moreno Glacier and this, as the guidebooks and previous visitors had promised, was well worth the time and expense. It is truelly awe-inspiring.
We had arrived in El Calafate, bombarded with billboards for all the different hostels, dropped off our stuff, booked and excursion and jumped on the minibus to the National Park, all within 1 hr 45 mins! A little bit too much rushing for our liking: we weren't used to this anymore!! The drive was pleasant, our guide knowledgable and enthusiastic about our destination.
Due to our visiting the park later in the day, it was almost empty as the other organised tours packed their customers back in the vans at the time we arrived. We spent almost 3 hrs, sitting, standing, gazing and listening. The
Uncooperative ice.
Despite waiting for a whole hour, this piece refused to collapse, for the benefit of my expectant lense silence of a slight breeze and soft bird calls carried on it, punctuated by the ominous crack and thunder of ice, 10 thousand years old, giving in to the millions of cubic metres pushing it from behind, 40 or so km to its point of origin, deep in the Andes. On a few occassions a huge, resounding crash announced that a few more tons of frozen water had joined its liquid counterpart in the lake below. The Perito Moreno glacier is only the third largest in the region, but is characterised by the fact it is still advancing and every 5 years its snout crosses this stretch of water entirely, is eroded by the water from below, forming an ice bridge that then collapses spectacularly. In a show of considerable obstinacy the big chunk I watched through my viewfinder for an hour, refused to budge, so I didn't get my National Geographic shot after all: how rude!
We stayed the night in El Calafate, played with a puppy from the hostel and went to bed early in order to be up in time for the 8 am bus to El Chaltén. But not before we played with another dog on
Its quite big:
Here from 8km about a third of the 4 km ice wall was visible. 75m high from the water's edge and a further 400 m below. At times, 800m thick, further up the valley! the way to the station and repayed him for guarding our stuff with a juicy empanada. We clambered on the bus and watched the world trundle by for 4 hours before we arrived in the town that carries the original name of the peak that made it famous: now called Cerro Fitz-Roy. Here we found a camping site, pitched the domed Casa de Nylon, and then set off for a short hike. A leisurely two hours got us to a vista point of the peak El Chaltén. Allegedly, it had been vanquished twice by the same man, the first climb claiming a friend's life and both occassions the "first ascent" title denied to him on a technicality, before a second climber achieved the goal, using the carabiner points first placed by the original climber some years before! Despite seeing it on postacrds and on the cover of our guide book, the view was fantastic and well worth me carting my unfit carcass over hill and dale to see it (read about 3 miles/5km!). That evening we braved the chilly mountain air, and had our camping food near a fire, lit but a fellow biker: an Argentine mechanic touring his country
Playful and watchful...
.. this guy sprang up to ward off any other curious canines. And that was even before his ham and cheese reward! on a CB 250. Any biker will know that this is neither a touring, nor off-road tool: priceless!!
The next day, once more we were on a bus, alter a hearty breakfast and, naturally, playing with the hostel’s dog. Here we embarked, on the stretch we had chosen to avoid on two wheel for reasons already explained. In actual fact, the majority of the road was no worse than what we had had in the past weeks but, although not present on this day, the wind could have been lethal. We made a couple of stops, one of which gave rise to one of the most memorable moments of this trip, for both of us, despite being a fairly insignificant event compared to some of the sites we had seen. At a rest stop in the Estancia La Siberia, we had a bite to eat, played with a dog, stroked the most affectionate cat known to man and then found that the vegetable garden was also home to two tamed Guanacos that the family had rescued when calves. These are beautiful animals to see in the wild, but even more so up close: deep red fur, incredibly soft to
El Chaltén: the imposter
The clouds rising from its peak led to the indigenous people naming it so: "The Volcano" in their tongue the touch when they let us, and with the biggest brightest eyes. Then the best bit: both Kristina and I took turns sticking our heads over the fence and the Guanacos, sometimes both at once would sniff and nuzzle our chins and noses with their soft snouts for as long as we stood there, only to start again if we resumed our position at the fence. Although tame, these were born wild and there is something truelly wonderful about an animal deciding it wants to know more about you, peaceful and unafraid. I was tempted to let the coach tyres down in order to prolong the experience.
We rode on, watching the Ruta 40 throw itself under the coach and getting Maté tips from the two drivers before finally reaching Perito Moreno, our point original of departure, and home to our host Raul and his mini camping. We stayed there for a further two days enjoying the simplicity of the town, playing Su Doku with a maté in hand, out of the blazing sun, and playing with dogs!! Wednesday morning we left a protesting Raul who would have had us stay as he claimed a worker strike meant none of
Lucky bar-stewards!
They did what I had imagined us doing a year before: good for them!! the roads worked so another night was in order. We decided to “take our chances” with this problem and set about finding a lift for the return to Rio Mayo and our bike! It seems the swift lift we got heading South was out of the ordinary as 4 hours of thumb pointing and 12 km of walking complete with bursting rucksacks got us no where except the junction with the Ruta 40. After all our criticism of them, it turned out to be a Chilean in a 4WD mitsubishi people carrier complete with moon-lander tyres and a huge exhaust, who carried us at a terrifying pace (we got air off the cattle grids!! I WANT ONE OF THOSE CARS!!) to within 20miles/30km of Rio Mayo. There we were picked up within 2 mins by a elderly gentleman in a miniscule car by comparison. He carried us to Rio Mayo, all the way his chassis and exhaust being pummelled by the high stone ridges between the ruts he rode in. So guilty were we that our extra weight had reduced what ground clearance he had even further, we paid for him to fill-up the tank, on arrival. We piled back
into the same hotel and went to see the bike. It was fine, albeit dusty, and the Chiefs wife who had our bike kit invited us and the cake we had bought them in for Maté, a chat and finally dinner. She was a complete nutter: full of humour, exhuberance and energy (in short, life): no wonder her husband looked exhausted. It was a long day, but finished on a fun note. The next day we endevoured to leave early, but this failed as we were cornered by the reporter for the local radio station who wanted a photo of us and the bike for the newspaper. This then evolved into a radio interview, and then a TV interview for the regional cable channel. It seems, as Warhol predicted, these were our 15 minutes of fame, although not worldwide, only Chubut wide! We left about 14.00 and started our ride to Tecka, the small haven town we had stayed in after our windy days on Ruta 25, 6 weeks before. It would appear that every arrival we make to this town would be preceded by heavy winds as they chased us North, matching our every turn!! We caught up with
Killer smile: Proof that dental floss is worth the effort...
... failing that any thorny bush from a semi arrid environment will do! the staff and kids, before leaving the next morning for the ride to Bariloche. The wind also made the first half of this journey difficult, but the second half, as I knew it would, made up for it as we chewed up the smooth tarmac of the Ruta 258 for the second time through El Bolsón and on to Baroliche, capital of Argentine Patagonia! We stopped in El Bolsón, looked around the Hippy market and bought Kristina her own Maté before playing chase with a loon in a VW. It may have “only” been a car, but our weight, lack of ground clearance and my need to avoiding pinking in the right side cylinder made it an even match: good fun until we ran out of petrol, that is!! There were two lucky aspects to this situation and one unlucky. The latter was that we ran out of petrol. The former were that we had only just passed a petrol station about 2 miles back and the other was that that morning, for the first time ever, I had asked the petrol attendant to also fill the stove canister at our last fuel stop. So we carefuññy rode back to
View from a bus, or from a crash helmet?
What we could have looked forward to on the GS!! the service station on the 0.3 litres of fuel I poured into the tank. 25 minutes later we arrived in Bariloche, headed for the nice place we had stayed in last time and then dined on a well deserved chunk of lamb and beef!! We like Bariloche!!
Kriss:
Our “Transpatagonia” coach was massive. It looked like some sort of purple bug with its pointy wing mirrors… We were fortunate to get the best seats in the bus - on top floor, all four front seats! It was nice to sit together for a change, holding hands and watching the coach eating up the grey asphalt, mile by mile by mile, probably not far from 1500 km in total. We can now say that we have sort of seen most of southern Patagonia - even though it’s not exactly sure, as half of the trip was darkened by the night.
El Calafate, the home of the world-famous advancing glacier of Perito Moreno, greeted us with a handful of tourist reps… This time we were prepared for this, though. Everything worked as a well-oiled conveyer belt - we found a budget cabaña, got a lift to the premises, had 15 min
May not look like much...
...but these mounds of smooth round stones are about 25-35cm high and border the firm 30 cm ruts that I have to try to ride in....with a cross wind that would leave a gorilla bald within the hour. to change clothes and were then called to the tour bus to the glacier. All that for a small fortune of cash. The tour bus guide was good, even though he had taken tourists to the glacier 4000+ times; his stories came across interesting and funny. I knew from the first sight to the glacier that the past 14 hours in the bus had been worth the journey. A massive carpet of ice, white, blue, grey, yellow - as far as my eyes could reach. It cracked and moaned and every now and then you could see a splash of white water, caused by the breaking giant icicles. It’s weird to think that some layers of the ice are as old as the mountains surrounding it… We had 2.5 hours to admire this wonder of nature, and I must say I could have looked at it for much longer.
The next morning our alarm clock woke us at sunrise, about 5 hours earlier than our usual rise! It was a crisp morning and the short walk to the bus station was nice and refreshing. We were “adopted” by one of the local stray dogs who saw us to the station
I'd like to dedicate this album to all my fans
Nick tries get his voice to sound deeper and more gravelly than normal and insisted on guarding our rug sacks from other wandering dogs - how sweet! We awarded him with a cold empanada and boarded on the bus, wishing that we could take him with us. We would have about 25 dogs by now, if we could - there are so many cute, friendly and playful homeless dogs in this country!
The Chaltèn Tours bus took us to our next destination, El Chaltèn, a small village on the northern side of a fluorescent tourquoise mountain lake called Lago Viedma. Rugged, dark grey mountain peaks were towering over the village - the famous Cerro Chaltèn, or Fitz Roy, as the Europeans call it. According to the mountaineers, this is one of the most challenging climbs in the southern Andes. Having learned our lesson in Villarica, we did not attempt to take the mountain this time. Instead, we chose a 2-hour walk through the national park to a viewpoint to the mountain. It was nice to stretch our legs a bit, and the surrounding landscapes were absolutely beautiful. That night, back at the campsite, we realized that we really were in the mountains - it was freezing! We even had some frost on our
Sunset over Tecka
A haven for us, for the second time... tent the next morning! We had another early start, this time by a combination of alarm clock and some shouting birds 😊 Motivated by the thought of a cup of steaming, freshly ground coffee, we were ultra-fast when packing up the tent and rushing to the Hostel International where our bus was departing to Perito Moreno at 8:30am. At 7:15 we were sitting in the lobby, looking at the sunrise and sipping our coffees. That hostel, as we found out, was “the place to be”. Full of young, trendy people who were all working hard trying to look good, we were standing out as a sore thumb 😉
An hour and half after the initial departure time the bus finally took off towards north. The trip to Perito Moreno would take 14 hours. It is difficult to get bored in the Patagonian bus trips - just when you are ready to close your eyes for a nap, the bus stops again and urges people to get some fresh air. As we were traveling through the steppe, the drivers pointed out to the wildlife at both side of the bus: Guanacos, Nandus, Chamancos, Armadillos, Foxes, etc. Everything was cool until a
We like the road to Bariloche!!
Ruta 258 rocks!! Our play with a local speed freak VW only spoiled by the minor inconvenience of running out of petrol... particular incident that really upset me… We were driving past a family of Nandus (relatives of the Ostrich family), a proud father with approx. 10 chicks, when the bus suddenly stopped and the drivers went running after the chicks. Confused and terrified, the chicks were separated from their sprinting father. Our drivers caught 3 of the chicks and brought them closer to the bus to show to the passengers. The entire bus got out and everyone wanted to touch and hold the birds. On that moment I felt so ashamed for the human race. Why can’t we just look at pretty things? Why do we have to touch everything and have a picture taken of “me and the trophy”?? No other animals would ever do that to human “cubs”. Those poor chicks were so scared, crying out for their parents, hearts beating in their throats, and no-one seemed to care. It seemed to go on forever. Finally, they were set free and I was praying that their papa would find them again. The drivers ensured that yes, the father is somewhere nearby with the other chicks, observing us, and will collect the 3 babies as soon as we are gone. I hope they were right. My heart was broken, though. Later that day, they did the same with an Armadillo.
Our dinner-break was in an estancia called La Siberia, a farm with a dog-footballer, orgasmic cat and 2 home-grown guanacos. The guanacos were for me definitely one of the highlights of the entire trip! Big brown eyes with long eyelashes, silky fur and soft lips. Yes, lips! They smelled of warm grass, and they seemed to be very curious about me and Nick, examining our faces with their velvety lips 😊
Finally, we got to Perito Moreno and we were relieved to go back to Raul’s Minicamping, where Raul was waiting for us with a hot meal. We felt so good at his home that we decided to stay there for another few days. Every day, Raul was pampering us, his “Señor y Señorita Turistas” with fresh salads and parrilladas (grilled meat). What a character! I wish I would be able to return visit to my “Argentine father” (his words) one day…
We left the minicamping on Wednesday, and I had convinced Nick to attempt another hitchhiking trip to Rio Mayo. We ended up walking 12km to the Ruta 40… Traffic in this neck of the woods is not brilliant, we saw about 10-15 cars during the 1st 4 hours of the journey and none of them dared to stop for us… Ruta 40 was different, though. There was a narrow grill-passage from the motorway to the dusty gravel road and I decided to stand in front of every car that turns on that route. Aching from the long walk with heavy rugsacks, we were trying to shield ourselves from the merciless Patagonian wind. After another few hours, we got a lift with a mad, one-armed Chilean man on a Mitsubishi minivan with non-existing tire threads, rallying over the dusty grounds. Huh! I must admit my life flashed through my eyes quite a few times during that journey. But we were making good progress and that was all that counted on that very moment. He dropped us off at the same point were we had first encountered the Ruta 40 with our bike, 30km south of Rio Mayo. About 5 minutes later a friendly Argentine man with a small car full of deliciously smelling pastries took us on board and soon we were back in Rio Mayo.
Later that evening we went to retrieve our bike and got side tracked by the police captain’s wife who instead on having mate with her 😊 Monica(1) was soon accompanied by another Monica(2), the wife of the captain’s deputy. Monica 1 was a petite argentine woman with curly hair and big laugh. Both of the girls were eager to learn all the “bad words” in English and were having great fun teaching Nick the Spanish equivalents. Meanwhile, I was kept busy by Monica1’s 3-year-old daughter who was teaching me numbers and animals in Spanish 😊
Monica 1 and Monica 2 invited us to stay also for the dinner and so we had our very first Argentine family dinner experience, in a friendly police home. Home-made gnocchi, rice-pudding, wine and the waffle - dulce de leche cake we had taken to Monica 1 for looking after our crash lids and tank bag when we were away. Even though I could not follow most of the jokes that evening, my cheeks were aching the next morning from grinning as the Argentines were not shy with their body language when trying to explain the context of the discussions.
Next morning we finally collected the bike and Nick got side tracked to the local Radio and TV Offices!! After many photo sessions and interviews, we finally managed to escape the town (way later than initially planned!) and rode like mad to reach Tecka before sunset. Exhausted from the long ride and strong winds, we finally made it at around 8pm. We were fortunate to stay the night in the same friendly boarding school that had given us refuge 6 weeks ago.
Yesterday, surrounded by the curious school kids, we turned our bike to north again and headed towards the curvy roads to Bariloche.
Goodbye, Patagonian Wind, Dust and Gravel!
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Irena Arambasic
non-member comment
London Wetland Centre connection on the same territory
Hey guys! Great to read your stories...and get a few tips for the journey ahead. Less of a wind in my hair and more of a carying the same environmental education thread kind-a-thing for me. I´m in Jujuy at the moment, looking at the remote mountain schools and outreach cultural projects. I will be in Cordoba on the 7th than back to Buenos Aires and on the 10th down to Patagonia...can´t wait. Are we crossing paths at any stage? Wishing you smooth tarmac and good weather. Hug Irena